Review: Inphonik RX950
About
The Akai S950, one of the most famous samplers from the 80s, is largely praised for its legendary sound. Many consider the 12-bit grit and crunch still unmatched today.
But the 12-bit resolution is not all. For over a year, Inphonik studied every bit of this studio gear masterpiece to bring back its unique character to your modern DAW with the RX950.
Meet the RX950 Classic AD/DA Converter, Inphonik’s first effect plug-in, designed to perfectly mimic the whole AD/DA conversion process of the Akai S950 in order to give your music this vintage, warm and crunchy sound with the ease & flexibility of a VST.
Key Features
- Legendary 12-bit resolution
- Perfect modelling of the S950’s audio signal path
- Adjustable audio bandwidth (and thus sampling frequency)
- Original steep 6th-order low-pass Butterworth filter
- Stereo or mono operation
- Low CPU consumption
- Adjustable brilliance setting (high frequency response)
- Graphical interface scaling options (from 1x to 2.5x)
- Parameter value keyboard typing on double-click
- NKS Support
- Dead Simple Controls for a Killer Sound
Input Gain: Makes your sound loud ’n proud with the S950’s unique grit and warm distortion. It is powerful and will help anything stand out in your mix.
Audio Bandwidth: Controls the target sample rate and analog-to-digital conversion circuitry with an exquisite, yet remarkably subtle, aliasing effect.
Filter: Controls the S950’s infamous steep low-pass filter. Use it on separate elements, or on any output bus or master section.
Brilliance: Adjust the Audio Bandwidth’s high frequency response with the Brilliance knob (in Settings/Back panel).
Our Review
We decided to test the RX950 against other similar plugins like Beatskillz SampleX, TAL Software TAL-DAC and ToneBoosters TimeMachine.
We tried to match similar settings but of course the results are highly subjective because each of these plugins have their own character.
We level matched all sounds so here are the tests we’ve made. All samples were kindly provided by Loopcloud.
909 Drum Loop
Dry
RX950
SampleX
TAL-DAC
TB TimeMachine
Fingered Bass
Dry
RX950
SampleX
TAL-DAC
TB TimeMachine
Acoustic Guitar
Dry
RX950
SampleX
TAL-DAC
TB TimeMachine
Time for conclusions! What we like about this plugin is its simplicity and the fact that you can get awesome results in no time. Even when you drive the input quite a lot you get beautiful sounding distortion. When you need the S950 vibe in your tracks, RX950 is a great choice. This plugin can easily compete with any of the plugins in our comparison test. All these features are available for an amazing price, so we definitely recommend the RX950 for your plugin arsenal!
Our Ratings
Value for money: 
(5 / 5)
Ease of use: (5 / 5)
Features: (5 / 5)
Summary: (5 / 5)